Search Worlds Without End

From 1936 to 1939, in the war-torn world of the Spanish Civil War, proponents of every major intellectual, economic, political, and philosophical movement of the 20th Century came together for what most believed was to be an epic battle for the future of mankind. Artists, literary émigrés, reporters, philosophers, literary giants, and political activists all poured in to Spain to be where the action was.

In a new vision of the Spanish Civil War, two revolutionaries who, in our universe would become twin stars of the firmaments of Hollywood and Cape Kennedy become instead, in the universe of Anarquía, the twin fulcrums on which pivot the hopes of the future. Hedy Lamarr and Wernher von Braun join Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, John Dos Passos, Ayn Rand, G. K. Chesterton, and a host of others who populate the alternate history Spanish Civil War universe of Anarquía.

It is the twenty-third century, and large space habitats have evolved where individual societies exist without formalized government-a galactic federation called Free Space. These are stories of the men and women of this new era, visions of adventure, social speculations, and downright arguments about freedom and responsibility.

Free Space offers fiction from Hugo and Nebula Award winners such as Poul Anderson, Gregory Benford, and Robert J. Sawyer, and particularly from winners of the Prometheus Award of the Libertarian Futurist Society, such as Victor Koman, Daffyd ab Hugh, and L. Neil Smith. In addition, there is work from William F. Buckley, Jared Lobdell, John Barnes and a number of other writers, making Free Space a big, rich, varied compendium of politically-engaged science fiction adventure.

Contents:

• Introduction (Free Space) - essay by Brad Linaweaver and Edward E. Kramer
• Crisis in Space - short story by William F. Buckley, Jr.
• Nerfworld - novelette by Dafydd ab Hugh
• Day of Atonement - short story by J. Neil Schulman
• No Market for Justice - short story by Brad Linaweaver
• Kwan Tingui - short story by William F. Wu
• Madam Butterfly - novelette by James P. Hogan
• Early Bird - novelette by Gregory Benford
• Of What Is Past, or Passing, or to Come II - poem by Ray Bradbury
• Tyranny - novelette by Poul Anderson
• The Killing of Davis-Davis - novelette by Peter Crowther
• Demokratus - novelette by Victor Koman
• The Hand You're Dealt - short story by Robert J. Sawyer
• How Do You Tell the Dreamer from the Dream? - short story by Wendy McElroy
• If Pigs Had Wings - short story by William Alan Ritch
• A Matter of Certainty - novelette by L. Neil Smith
• Planet in the Balance - short story by John DeChancie
• The Performance of a Lifetime - novelette by Arthur Byron Cover
• The Last Holosong of Christopher Lightning - short story by Jared Lobdell
• Between Shepherds and Kings - short story by John Barnes
• Free at Last - poem by Robert Anton Wilson

What if Hitler had not lost the Second World War?

After developing his own atom bomb, Hitler conquered most of Europe and Russia but reached a stalemate with America. In the ensuing cold war, Germany suffers renewed inflation and is stifled by an overstratified bureaucracy while America prospers but devolves into a fractured country of rugged individualists. This warped mirror image of our world is seen through the eyes of New York editor Alan Whittmore and through two of his publications.

Thirty years after the war's end, Hilda Goebbels, the daughter of Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and now a world-famous anarchist, threatens to release her father's long-suppressed diaries - revealing the bizarre fantasies at the core of Nazi doctrine, which could destroy the Reich.

Nebula nominated novella. It originally appeared in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, March 1982. It can also be found in the anthologies Hitler Victorious (1987), edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg and The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century (2001), edited by Harry Turtledove and Martin H. Greenberg. It was later expanded to the full novel Moon of Ice (1988).

Quinn Mallory and his friends are about to find out what it's like to take the ultimate "slide" through parallel dimensions of Earth. Each time they step through the strange portals that Quinn discovers, a new present-day San Francisco awaits. At times it will be fascinating, at times frightening - but always dangerous.

tie-in novel to the hit TV Series "Sliders"

having escaped from the dead area of non-space called the urcloud, the ragtag fleet of Colonials find themselves delivered to planet Paradis.

Commander Apollo is once again drawn into conflict with ego-driven civilians who manipulate the Council of Twelve towards their own ends. As tensions mount among the Colonials, a treacherous plan is hatched that threatens to destroy everything the commander has worked so hard for-as well as Apollo himself...

When the dying sun of Paradis dramatically begins its contraction phase, a two year stay by the Galacticans and the colonials on what appears to be the perfect planet for rebuilding their civilization comes to an abrupt end-the planet's inhabitants are forced to make a hurried exit back into space. Discovering that several of their refurbished ships are incapable of deep-space travel, the fleet returns to Paradis for repairs-just in time for the sudden catastophic destruction of the entire planet by the Cylons. Apollo, Tigh, and Athena make the painful decision to leave one-third of the fleet behind in order to save the rest.

After fleeing planet Paradis and discovering that many of their ships were no longer capable of deep space travel, the Colonials were forced to hold a lottery to decide who in the fleet would live and who would have to stay behind and die.

Apollo, Sheba, and Koran forfeit their securred place in the fleet to stay behind with 800 other Colonials who have been chosen by the people's lottery to sacrafice their lives. They are suprised by the arrival of an ancient 13th tribe space ark, which has been freed from its frozen grave deep within the bowels of Paradis by the catostraphic destruction of the planet. They discover that the huge craft is habitable and capable of sustaining all surviving colonials who were forced to stay behind.